<div dir="ltr">Hal, I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing that falls within the purview of your work, but I'll send it along anyway so you can decide--and no hard feelings if it's not for you!<div>Cheers,</div><div>Tim</div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Members of this group may be interested to read about the activities of the students in my Publishing in the 21st Century class at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, USA.</span><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Over the past two years, we have been working to publish a series of classroom materials in indigenous languages of the Chittagong Hill Tracts--Marma, Mro, and Chakma in particular--for three schools where children are educated in their mother tongues. So far they have made alphabet charts, rubber alphabet stamps, coloring sheets, writing journals, stickers, and classroom storybook readers based on oral history tales the children themselves collected from their elders. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">For more information, please visit <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/663870893/education-in-the-chittagong-hill-tracts" target="_blank">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/663870893/education-in-the-chittagong-hill-tracts</a>.</div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Thanks!</div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Harold Schiffman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:hfsclpp@gmail.com" target="_blank">hfsclpp@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><h1>Educational leaders should revisit our language education policy</h1></div><div> <span>April 9, 2015</span> · By <span><a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/author/layout/" title="Posts by Staff Writer" rel="author" target="_blank">Staff Writer</a></span> · <a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/opinion/letters/04/09/educational-leaders-should-revisit-our-language-education-policy/#disqus_thread" target="_blank">1 Comment</a> <span></span><span><a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/opinion/letters/04/09/sn-report-was-distasteful/" rel="prev" target="_blank">Next Article »</a></span></div><div><div style="width:140px;margin:0px"><div><span style="vertical-align:bottom;width:124px;min-height:20px"></span></div></div><div><a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/opinion/letters/04/09/educational-leaders-should-revisit-our-language-education-policy/print/" title="Print" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Print</a></div></div><div><p><em>Dear Editor,</em></p><p> </p><p>Please
permit me to raise once again the issue of language rights and language
education policy in Guyana. In spite of abundant evidence to contradict
it, the persistent idea that the people of the ex-British colonies have
a ‘common grounding’ in the English language still wins support in
influential circles at the University of Guyana and the Cyril Potter
[teachers’] College. This idea is further exalted in the concept of
‘International Englishes’ (a term referring to the various ways in which
speakers of languages other than English have influenced English), as
well as in Richard Allsopp’s ‘Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage’
(published in 1996). More recently the idea has found an articulate
voice in the person of Mr Ian McDonald (Sunday Stabroek, March 29, page
7).</p><p>Mr McDonald argues that cricket and English are two powerful
uniting forces of the ex-British Caribbean, (he uses the term ‘West
Indian’) declaring English to be the “imaginative possession which
defines our nationhood even more basically than cricket.” I agree that
our literary and musical artists have expanded and enriched the English
language. But adherence to the idea without recognition of the true
nature of our linguistic ‘bedrock’ makes us pawns in a racist, hegemonic
agenda that underlies it. Albert Memmi’s definition of racism serves my
argument:</p><p>Racism is the generalized and final assigning of values
to real or imaginary differences, to the accuser’s benefit and at his
victim’s expense, in order to justify the former’s own privileges or
aggression.</p><p>Sir Hilary Beckles writes of an elite class of
descendants of slaves in Barbados, who “learned English and through it
separated themselves from the masses of Creole speakers.” I argue that
this elite class exists everywhere in the ex-British Caribbean and the
manner in which value is assigned to the real differences in our
linguistic inheritances privileges this class, giving them an undeserved
advantage in the socio-political and socio-economic order.</p><p>Unlike
cricket, language is a natural possession acquired in childhood,
perhaps in vitro, from parents, caregivers and community. The mother
tongues of the majority of Caribbean speakers originated in the (16th,
17th and 18th century) contact situations between the colonists and
speakers of certain African languages on the west coast of Africa, were
further developed on the slave plantations with linguistic inputs from
other immigrant groups, and acquired naturally by children on the
plantations and subsequent post-emancipation societies. In grammar and
phonology, the differences between these mother tongues and the
colonists’ have disproved the proposition that they are dialects of
English and other European languages, although they have borrowed much
of their respective vocabularies from them.</p><p>The shaky ‘dialect’
argument is used to justify the continuation of colonial language
policies in the region. Our Guyanese (Creolese) is assigned inferior
value to English in the education system. In fact, it is illegitimate to
use it even orally to teach the content areas. It is assigned dialectal
‘folk’ value, in written form; it is skilfully used by English-speaking
creative writers who seek individual recognition of their Caribbean
specificity abroad; it appears in print media verbatim reports of
interviews with the Guyanese speakers; and it is exploited by the
business elite in advertising. But the most damaging aspect of the
agenda is that although Guyanese appears occasionally in English
language textbooks, it is assigned negative educational value in the
assessment of students’ speech and writing.</p><p>Mr McDonald blames the
education systems of the region for the “uniformly poor CXC results in
English,” suggests that there is a “shortfall in quality or quantity of
English teachers in the schools” and concludes that the authorities do
not place a high priority on the teaching of English. My first-hand
experience discredits this criticism. A great deal of frenetic energy is
spent chasing after the English ideal, even in the nursery schools.
Hours upon hours spent on English phonics in our primary schools and
pages upon pages of English text copied from books or chalkboards in our
secondary schools are testimony to this English monolingual agenda.</p><p>In
our multi-lingual situation a child may acquire more than one mother
tongue. But the reality is that English is not a mother tongue for the
vast majority. Because of their captive audiences and Guyanese teachers’
facility with the children’s mother tongues, schools are potentially
powerful spaces where children can learn together. Schools also have the
potential to enhance the linguistic power of their pupils, both with
respect to their mother tongues as well as any ‘other’ languages. For
Guyana, we can safely assume English to be the most highly desired
‘other’.</p><p>If schools are to realize their potential, educational
leaders will need to understand that their grand idea founders upon its
own misconstrued pillars. For the convenience of public administration
and social control, the minority British colonialists had imposed their
shared language on the educational institutions in their colonies
because they had the power to do so. Shouldn’t our language idea/ideal
be driven by the quest to liberate the people’s voices and to involve
them in the decision-making of our imagined nation? What kind of
democracy would we be constructing if the people were forced to deny
this vital and inalienable possession—their languages—by disempowerment
through non-recognition? What kind of educational leaders would shroud
linguistic differences in a smokescreen of assumed commonality and blame
the victims for the results of discriminatory educational policy, the
flagship of racist, capitalist hegemony?</p><p>And if the idea/ideal of a
single, standardized language is so compelling for the unifying of an
imagined nation, whose language should it be? In this time of new
coalition politics in Guyana, “… driven by a compelling sense of urgency
and by national outrage” (Moses Bhagwan, Stabroek News, April 2) I urge
that our educational leaders understand the urgency of revisiting our
language education policy with more genuine commitment to inclusive
democracy than we have done in the past.</p><p><em>Yours faithfully,</em></p><p><em>Charlene Wilkinson</em></p><p><em>Lecturer, Department of</em></p><p><em>Language and Cultural</em></p><p><em>Studies</em></p><p><em>Faculty of Education and</em></p><p><em>the Humanities</em></p><p><em>University of Guyana</em></p><p><em><a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/opinion/letters/04/09/educational-leaders-should-revisit-our-language-education-policy/" target="_blank">http://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/opinion/letters/04/09/educational-leaders-should-revisit-our-language-education-policy/</a><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></em></p></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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